Franca Barraclough: The Visitors

The Visitors is a powerfully evocative exhibition by long time Alice Springs based artist Franca Barraclough that grapples with what she refers to as the ‘dancing duality’ of living on Country. It is a conundrum that living in the desert throws into high relief but that is also in play across the nation - the challenge of reconciling the push and pull of people and place, of belonging and not belonging, of relating to a landscape that simultaneously repels and holds, emotionally and psychologically. Core to her work is the quest to make sense of where and how we live, wherever we live. Well known and much loved for her performance-based community engagement projects, here Barraclough turns her inimitable creative energy to the realisation of a series of monumental photographic images and immersive audio-visual experiences. Created over three years and enlisting countless community members in the staging and production, the resulting works combine humour with serious intent in a compelling and reflective way, drawing our attention to prescient global issues through a potent local prism. There is a fascination with the Central Desert as the mythologised spiritual centre of Australia. It is a place both alluring and alienating in the popular imagination and pivotal to a sense of national identity. Barraclough plays with some of these stereotypes and clichés and encourages us to reassess our connection to and impact on place.